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Public Meetings for Beacon Hill and other MTB news

Here is a note from the President of Evergreen East, our local Evergreen Mountain Biking Alliance chapter for easther WA. There are some crititcal meetings coming up that mountain bikers should consider attending in order to preserve access for Beacon as well as other areas mentioned below.

Folks -

First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you for writing letters of support for prioritizing Beacon Hill in this round of Conservation Futures. We had over 300(!) letters of support, which if I'm not mistaken is an order of magnitude more than received for any of the other areas of interest this round.

We have about 150 acres nominated this round, including two critical pieces that include parts of Upchuck north of the city property, and the top of the DH course. We also have a big piece north of Shields park, several parcels near the towers, and some properties off Frederick and adjacent to the power lines closer to Esmeralda.

Countless hours of work have gone in to this effort, and particular thanks goes to Nate Hutchens who's led the charge.

We're at a point now where we need your help again. We have two upcoming public meetings where we need your voice.

The first is a public input meeting for the Conservation Futures program on Thursday June 16th from 4:30-7PM. It's at Centerplace Regional Event Center in Mirabeau: 2426 N Discovery Place. There will be a presentation of all the nominated parcels from 4:30-5:30, then a comment period after. I'll speak on our behalf as president, but anyone who wants to speak would be most welcome. Of note here is perhaps accentuating the fact that the selection criteria for CF parcels has changed to more heavily weight recreation opportunity, and to highlight just how special Beacon Hill is to our area.

In parallel with our work with County Parks on CF, we've also been working with City Parks on a proposed public ownership structure for Beacon. We've met with several committees of the parks board, and have attended several meetings of the parks board in it's entirety. We're at the point where the parks board will be taking a vote on agreeing to take ownership of several parcels adjacent to Sekani once we can secure funding via Conservation Futures or other grants. This is critical.

At the board meetings I've attended to date, there have been 2 or fewer members of the public present. The room has seating for 200. If we can fill the place, they would have a tough time not voting to take ownership of these parcels to help us save Beacon. Please, if you can come it would be huge. If you can't, send your friends and family. Bring your kids as a civic field trip. OK, enough groveling :P

The meeting is Thursday July 14th at City Hall in the City Council Chambers in the basement, from 1:30-3:30PM. Chances are we'd be towards the beginning so if you need to leave earlier that's OK.

Questions let me know, and we'll try to get these out as events on Facebook for reminders.

Side note - been doing a lot of advocacy work for the Colville National Forest(Kettle Crest) as well, more on that later(info here: http://colvilleplanrevision.publicmeeting.info/). Also, Mica is looking good so far - there's another community mapping day tomorrow (6/11) at 9AM at the Belmont trail head (http://micapeaktrailplan.com/ - click Get Involved for info and instructions).